To: To the University Family
From: Joel Seligman
Re: End of Year Letter
Ten years ago on July 3 at 8 a.m., I sent my first e mail to the University of Rochester community with the following words: “The Campaign for the University of Rochester begins today.”
Today I want to renew my vows. We are going to The Next Level, with significant initiatives during the next five years in Data Science, Neuromedicine and Neuroscience, the Humanities and the Performing Arts, and the University’s Role in the Community.
No one should ever have any delusions that progress for any institution in our country today is easy or assured. But I am proud to report an almost palpable sense of momentum at the University.
In April, School of Arts and Sciences Dean Gloria Culver announced the establishment of a new Humanities Center and Institute for Performing Arts.
On May 27th, we dedicated the new Golisano Children’s Hospital, the largest building project in our history with eight floors and 245,000 square feet of space dedicated to children and their families, including a greatly expanded Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The dedication was a particularly memorable event featuring a “Parade of Miracles” including more than 20 children, and recognition of more than 120 donors who had named rooms or spaces within the Hospital. Nearly 8,500 individuals and community groups have given more than $53 million in philanthropic gifts to the new hospital, led by Tom Golisano’s transformative $20 million gift.
On May 28th, we announced that Elizabeth Stauderman will succeed Bill Murphy as our new Vice President for Communications after Bill’s nine outstanding years of service. Elizabeth comes to us from Yale, where for the past five years she served as Chief Communications Officer and Special Assistant to the President after earlier stints at Yale Law School and Yale School of Management.
On June 1st, Highland Hospital broke ground for a $28 million expansion which will include six state-of-the art operating rooms and 28 beds.
Earlier, in May, the New York State Department of Health announced that the Finger Lakes Performing Provider System is eligible to receive up to $565 million over five years to transform the way health care is delivered to more than 300,000 Medicaid beneficiaries in the Finger Lakes region.
UR Medicine’s Wilmot Cancer Institute, Noyes Health, Jones Memorial Hospital, and UR Medicine Radiation Oncology in Hornell announced in April that they are developing a regional cancer center based in Dansville. The new Center will be named in honor of Ann and Carl Myers, whose $2 million gift was pivotal in helping fund the new facility.
Simon Business School’s New York City program, with about 200 students, will relocate this summer to a beautiful new facility owned by New York Law School.
On July 1st, the University, working through its Warner School of Education, will become Superintendent of East High School in an effort to revitalize the oldest and largest high school in Rochester.
This was a year of stellar faculty appointments, including Grammy winning tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, who has joined the faculty of Eastman. His signature roles include Peter Grimes and he has performed in the world’s most prestigious opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Paris Opera.
Earlier this month, John Foxe was named the research director of the Del Monte Neuromedicine Institute and the Kilian J. and Caroline F. Schmitt Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the School of Medicine and Dentistry. Foxe currently serves as Director of Research for the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a leading scholar of monetary and financial economics, will be the inaugural Lionel W. McKenzie Professor of Economics, effective January 1st, 2016. Previously he held professorships at Northwestern University, the University of Iowa, Stanford University, and the University of Minnesota, where he also served as the chair of the economics department.
Nearly 17,000 students applied for admission to the College, and we expect 1,280 to enroll in the fall. The average high school GPA is 3.8 and average two-score equivalent SAT is 1384, up 80 points since 2005, or an increase from the 87th to the 94th percentile. Unrepresented minority students will comprise 16.9 percent of the entering class and international students will make up 20.6 percent.
Our outstanding faculty, students and staff deserve special credit for our continued progress. Let me highlight several outstanding achievements.
Lynne Maquat, the J. Lowell Orbison Distinguished Service Alumni Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, received the 2015 Gairdner International Award for the discovery and mechanistic studies of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. She is one of five scientists honored with the award, which is given to recognize the achievement of medical researchers whose work contributes significantly to improving the quality of human life.
URMC neurologist Ray Dorsey, Director of the Center for Human Experimental Therapeutics, was honored at the White House as one of seven “Champions of Change” who are doing extraordinary work to advocate for better treatments and a cure for individuals with Parkinson’s disease.
Barbara Iglewski, Professor Emerita in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, will be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in October. Barbara is the author of more than 150 research papers and book chapters, recognized by the Institute of Scientific Information as a highly cited scientist, a group that makes up less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers.
Elika Bergelson, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, was selected for the 2015 Forbes Magazine list of “30 Under 30” in science in January. Elika was recognized for her research on the development of language in infants. She studies how babies ages 6 months to 18 months learn words from the visual, social, and linguistic world around them.
Ching Tang, Professor of Chemical Engineering, was recognized as a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate for being one of the most influential researchers in the field of chemistry for his role in inventing the organic light-emitting diode.
Principal Investigator Gary Morrow was selected to receive an $18.6 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute for a leadership role in a nationwide clinical research network to investigate cancer-related side-effects.
Professor Suzanne Haber and other researchers at the School of Medicine and Dentistry were awarded a $10 million grant by the National Institute of Mental Health to lead a study about obsessive-compulsive disorder. The goal is to improve the understanding of the brain networks that play a central role in this disorder and to develop new treatments.
School of Nursing Researcher and Associate Professor Hyekyun Rhee received a $2.9 million, five-year grant from the NIH to support her research that will help improve asthma outcomes among inner city youth. She will be further testing her peer-led interventions in three cities: Buffalo, Baltimore, and Memphis.
Beth Olivares, Dean for University Initiatives in Arts, Sciences and Engineering and Director of the David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity, was one of 15 recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. For the past decade, the Kearns Center has obtained more than $10 million in support for its programs, which include Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math/Science, two college prep centers located in the City School District, and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program.
Michelle Janelsins, researcher at the Wilmot Cancer Institute, recently received an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the highest honor conferred by the NIH for young investigators. She was awarded a $2.3 million grant to continue her research on so-called “chemo-brain.”
Susan H. McDaniel, the Dr. Laurie Sands Distinguished Professor of Families & Health and Director of the Institute for the Family in the Department of Psychiatry, has been elected 2016 president of the American Psychological Association.
Eastman faculty and alumni were recognized at the 57th annual Grammy awards: Paul O’Dette, professor of lute, won “Best Opera Recording” and alumnus Bob Ludwig won three awards – “Album of the Year,” “Best Engineered Album,” and “Best Surround Sound Album.”
Professor of Optics and Physics Chunlei Guo and Anatoliy Vorobyev, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Optics, published a paper in the Journal of Applied Physics that describes a powerful and precise laser patterning technique that has been used to transform metals into extremely water repellant, or super-hydrophobic, materials without the need for temporary coatings. A YouTube video of their work was seen by more than 1.3 million viewers. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLegmQ8_dHg
Astronomer Eric Mamajek and his co-author from the Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands, have discovered a ring system of enormous proportions, 200 times larger than that around Saturn. This is the first such structure of its kind to be found outside our solar system.
The University was identified by the journal Nature Biotechnology as one of the top 10 universities in the nation for the impact of its life sciences research. The recognition reflects not only the University’s success in attracting federal research funding, but also our ability to translate this research into new ideas and technologies that stimulate economic activity and ultimately will improve lives.
Our Golisano Children’s Hospital earned a place among the nation’s best hospitals in two pediatric specialty areas – nephrology and endocrinology/diabetes – in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospital rankings for 2015-2016.
Let me also praise our exceptional students.
In February, the Students’ Association (SA) launched the University’s “It’s On Us” campaign, a national effort to raise awareness about sexual violence in all of its forms. A video produced by the SA Government in collaboration with University Communications highlights many ongoing efforts at the University that are helping to prevent sexual misconduct. See http://sa.rochester.edu/sa/itsonus/
Five students were awarded Fulbright scholarships: Jacek Blaszkiewicz (France), Lauren Kee ’15 (Philippines), Benjamin E. Landwersiek ’15 (Spain), Samantha Whalen ’15 (Malaysia), and Melissa Zgouridi ’15 (T5) (Austria).
Four student athletes were named Capital One Academic All-America: Lauren Bailey ’15 (swimming), Griffin Drake ’15 (men’s soccer), Matt Mender ’16 (football), and Alex Swanger ’15 (men’s soccer). Lauren Bailey and Emily Widra, both recent graduates, were elected to the Capital One Academic All-America Division III At-Large Team, Lauren for swimming and Emily for rowing. Brittany Grage ‘15 was recently named a First Team All-American in Division III softball by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association. She is the fifth Rochester softball player in the last eight years to earn All-America honors and the second to be named as a First Team All-American.
This year 11 students were awarded All-American Honors: Lauren Bailey ’15 (women’s swimming), Neil Cordell ’16 (squash), Tomotaka Endo ’18 (squash), Ryosei Kobayashi ’17 (squash), Tara Lamberti ’16 (field hockey), Alexandra Leslie ’18 (women’s basketball), Vicky Luan ’16 (women’s swimming), Michelle Relin ’16 (field hockey), Emily Simon ’17 (women’s swimming), Khamai Simpson ’17 (women’s swimming), and Mario Yanez Tapia ’17 (squash).
Four Eastman students have been named recipients of the 2015 DownBeat Student Music Awards. Garret Reynolds was recognized for Undergraduate College Outstanding Composition for his work “Our Time.” Brendan Lanighan was recognized for Undergraduate College Outstanding Arrangement for “Lament.” Gabe Condon and Julian Tanaka were named Graduate College Arrangement winners for “In a Sentimental Mood” and “Orbit” (Unless It’s You), respectively. Downbeat is one of the country’s most respected jazz magazines and often called “the bible of jazz.”
On June 1st, we recognized University staff with significant milestones in their University tenure. We celebrated Shirley Brignall, Administrative Assistant in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, for an astonishing 60 year service to the University. It is notable that throughout our history, six employees of our University have served longer. Tony Kinslow, our new Associate Vice President for Human Resources, also paid homage to an employee still working who was born in 1913 – Dr. Morris Shapiro, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Professor Emeritus of Surgery. Morris, however, has only served at the University 42 years so far!
Thank you to all of our faculty and staff for their hard work and dedication. Let me wish everyone a happy and healthy summer.